Bike Brat

One mad boy’s on his bike tricking out in the parking lot

a-bouncing and swinging around as if

the ground b-bopped and bowed.

He’s got his feet to the pedals and his arms sticking out

to the undisciplined street before the

pavement slowed.

But he’s been breaking out backwards on his bike

with a jumping chain corroded

and slumping and hiking it around—

dragging out his tires on the sand and

drowning out sound.

And he spends his days with Rave Dave

and Todd the Bod and plays drinking games

in the basement of some flat,

running with White Heap on the streets at night

and by first light’s found in the lot out back—

just one mad boy breaking out bad beats

once a bike brat.

BACK

--Poems from the Sprawl

Dead Ends

So you know summer’s here with the sweet smell of grass

and when the chimes without wind get to slowing—

when on each side of the street the sun’s beating us dry

to wilt like the breathless and growing.

There were no escapes so we gathered in the attics

of our back roads counter-culture of plenty—

we laughed as the sun set and threw up in the bushes—

we were growing up so slow and so empty.

We came on the pavement when it still was heated

and scuffed our shorts in mid game.

Though no one complained we didn’t like to be treated

with disdain from the insane

or the blunt force of tar under flame.

So we piled our garbage on the curbside to hide it

and stashed our other junk under hedge lines.

With the wreckage of shingles and siding and yard ash,

we trashed the whole house when the sun didn’t shine!

But the streetlight’s lullaby was so patient in the evening

and beneath it we weeds were grown spared.

We were feeding from the sun so they’d stomp us out soon

to dry out by the stem, but nobody cared.

So we ran with the prisoners out into the yard

and clicked away our food trays.

Though the lines weren’t pleasant the grades came hard

‘til we grew out of that phase

and went to light the school ablaze.

See down in these hills from the mud pits and swamps

there were war fields of kills and old joys.

The lost tires and axles in the dump were our weapons

and the busted up bikes we claimed as our toys.

The “dead” were then stripped of their pleasures and profits

from the Moped sand dunes to the curb rides,

so the beyond-the-home jungles hid a hideout of castles

piled up on the backs of the kids with weak sides.

But we came from the halls of our public school clinks

all robed in their touchable glazes,

so in the blink of an eye we grew out of our links

where the chains broke away

and melted down in our blazes.

See mine was a realm of tall tree forts and landlines

over yard hides and curb sides for the box slots,

and the sandlots were full of the young farts and junk mines

of glass and train tracks behind dead plots.

But there the back fence alleys of shade gave us shelter

and made us with the kid criminals and cravens,

and we rolled with their highs near the flats through board slats

and sat in like princes lowdown in those havens.

For we came from the class of the working and tired

with God-given smugness in our eyes

that in one blink could run the earth dry for us sun-sired

young to climb up a dump drive

and purge it by fire to ward off the flies.

See this August heat beat us at the pool down the street

when the clotheslines were low with the whites,

and below them the patio blazed on our feet

but the cool was screened-in from the bug bites.

And there with the neighbor’s umbrellas and lawn chairs

I’d get to laze on the float with their daughter

while the other one bathed in the beams on the grass

with the chlorine punch right out the water!

And the creek had its bottles in the muck with a tire

so we’d stomp out the shortcuts and yards

through the bush briars stripped to the bright pine groves

and the green duckweed stills

out of sight to light up and play cards.  

And we’d each take our turns with the cannonball jump

to see who could make the big splash—

It’d be Zach from the roof off the trampoline spring

with a prayer he’d take it, break it, and crash!

And we’d ride out on wheels as the air dried our heels

and our clothes up the bends in the roadways.

So with the wind in my hair and a girl on my back

we’d bike out the evening most slow days.

Then we’d run home at sunset as the streetlights shot on,

and hang at the park with the searchlights,

where they’d scope out the dealers with the thugs

and the squealers with a stash

for some cash to burn late nights.

There the cars lined the curbs on those one-ways all parked

that used to pain me at the bottoms I’d roll.

For getting going too fast was a gravity curse

whether biking or boardin' the downhill knoll.

But the safety of driveways gave us hoops on the tar

where we’d break glass and bounce off our balls.

Then we’d retreat in the evenings as the stereos boomed

out the room windows and paper-thin walls.

But the links would catch us in the crotch as we hopped

and the boarded ones were never loose.

So on the run for some fun when the games had begun

we’d seem to scrape out for

freedom with a tear and a noose!

So every flower and grass blade withered away in its place

and browned in the porch pots left hanging,

that by the sunny afternoons the boards of the porches

soon saw their paint peeling and screen doors banging.

But the tracks filled with noise in the mornings and evenings

to remind me the cost of surviving.

Still the chain stores created desolation so perfect—

and our parking lot baseball was thriving!

For we came unknowing and unlearned of our days

from the Lines in the gaps of this sprawl—

our chemistry spaced in a gasoline-haze phase

with our burning desires

and a thirst for life’s call.

Soon the leaves stuck down to lay damp in the fall

just to freeze to the snowscapes below us.

The years passed so quickly from summer heat to gray cold

and the sun still had no news to show us.

But the killer was seventeen in a little shack up my street

with a confidence he’d kill to defend.

But he must have known it for we all had this hunch

that our futures were nothing but dead ends.

So we came on the grass to vandalize and hide

so that Gadfly and his boys could return—

We buried our tracks in the sand and took a long ride

to learn a lifetime unearned

while we waited to get burned.

Still the street sign was stolen so this dead end’s unnamed

but I’ll explain where the road it was crossed—

through this funny kid’s brain! So in time it became

understood why we all were so lost.

So I still know summer’s here with the sweet smell of grass,

and when the chimes without wind get to slowing—

when on each side of the street the sun’s beating us dry

to wilt like the breathless and growing.

A dizzying blacktop spin,

Out in the backyard,

I could not step away from. 

NEXT

--Poems from the Sprawl

Fartin' Around

As boys of the back burbs we often got bored

so we'd have to make our own fun

when pleasures didn’t come at the end of a chord.

It didn’t take a lot when the summer got too hot,

when we were just ten and friends and hangin’

up in the bedrooms head-bangin’.

So behind the door, “Let's get this party started!”

“Take off the shirt, make it hurt,”

that’s how we did it when we got too dull-hearted.

So down on the floor, “bed ‘em and spread ‘em!”

blasting off with our brotherly affinity

and trying out some masculinity.

Beatings and belches and “dude make ‘em louder!”

deeper and meaner, sharper dealers,

hitting our squealers so we couldn’t be prouder.

Saying “Make some noise! Turn up the boom!”

Just a couple dudes learnin’ and burnin’

and goofing ‘round in a room.

But then I remember the harsh shame I felt

when they’d all proved themselves,

and I was never proud of the punches I dealt.

They could be so rough and tough and manly,

but my lame young guns and crushed beer cans

weren’t making me feel like much of a man.

So we lit ‘em and laughed, we did our passes,

and we broke them out and choked

and laid ourselves down in all those hot gasses.

The leaner, the meaner, the better for dudes,

so lewd and crude, but it’s all we knew

about what the “real men” do.

NEXT

--Poems from the Sprawl

Bandlands Blues

When below the high power lines flying by overhead

and inbound by the green beat up signs scattered on these living

back road grounds, you feel you’ve seen this sight imply

the graves of ghosts still unseen and fighting

on this battlefield of working class misgivings

and come-arounds.

For the yard grass is swishing in the sun with the

afternoon scrawl of broken glass and hosts

the hiding and unspoken punks out on someone’s fun,

and you pass one-ways of tired kids who run forbidden from

all but a driveway ballgame as if it’s still the biggest thing that

they have ever done.

And with no sidewalks in this blind drive or

dead end deserted but for the weedy shacks and crooked signs you

sense the lack of regard, for there’s junked cars sitting beside the

plywood backs as cast aside and forgotten

as the lifers who’ve been hiding in the hedges

of someone else’s yard.

Go meet Chuck down the street in the truck bed—

talk to Dyl on the pills or Zach-Attack from the hills or Jay

on the sidewalks or Bridget on the rocks or Leeroy the boy-toy

or Georgie in his socks or Dinah with her chalk,

for they’ll all be there ‘til the evening crickets are

singing down the block.

And if no valley snout house can be found here

and no tract house can fit near the tracks or under

the power lines asunder on the hill, at their porch light confessional

you’re still washed of your wandering sins

and given your weary fill, for only here live

some ready, right, and willing to do such with

so much time to kill.

NEXT

--Poems from the Sprawl

Overpass Ode

The clarion hum of streetlights, that serpentine hiss—

The gargling drain spout, that dragonfly buzz—

The vibrations out the television’s static mouthpiece—

The engine running idle, that crackling fire in the pit, melt,

and are absorbed before the overpass felt

like the Titans rolling thunder over sound.

The rustling grass by breath of breeze in a field—

The bullfrog drone, that fallen tree—

The marching steps parading down a chainsaw run

or any bass chord of nature beating blood through it is dealt

unheard beneath the freeway belt—

Those cars forever passing on the ground.

In it loon’s blues are beaten, cicadas made to perk—

Crickets lost in tempo, grasshoppers rendered lame—

And any thoughts of seated solitude surrendered.

All for that distant gush of tires on asphalt and wind to frame,

where steel and plastic meet the air

in speed, echo endlessly, and deafen out trees.

All things made to work by metal roar a hollow tone

heard down the street, a whispered word—

a fiend of headlights, a foghorn stretch of road

that in night sits undaunted by your silent window black,

like an ancient call and answer back,

a vacant drum roll for New Age nurseries.

And we used to see the headlights through the trees

what seemed a hundred miles away—

It was I-95 working its way along outside

my bedroom window all night long when I was little—

used to send my brother and I sleep bound

past the emptiness in the distance.

A Little Night Ambiance.

NEXT

--Poems from the Sprawl 

Two Went Missing

Two were guilty of the sin in breathing

when they strayed that day they vanished—

still just ten and younger.

They were camping beneath the power lines

under stars that are now dying—

their pointed parts in heaven hadn’t stretched the endless sky

but left a changeling waiting with them in the wooded grass

where lost as they were lying.

They shared themselves down in that grove

below those power lines and hid their secret

tight beneath their clothing.

And in the dark when they saw no eyes

the visions stirred that summer sweating

and landed bright upon the ground to show two kids’ path

back from the woods in truths so rounded new they found

them hard to be forgetting.

From then the sounds of nature stilled and

all the hills bowed down the sky a fabled prayer—

a lost kid’s lonely whimper.

And though the bats flew ‘round the moon

in the nighttime harvest of their filling,

the two souls who were grounded grew out survival to be living

and in searching fearful in the dark they sought them only

from the Spirit all He's willing.

But their bodies gasped and gave in before day

as twilight broke the heavens from the treeline

where they’re sleeping.

So when missing in the dark, the wild heard

their cries and worded prayers—

And as dawn revealed their way they left the Spirit stranded,

and empty handed, ran back home like two lost kids who

knew now what was theirs. 

NEXT

--Poems from the Sprawl